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That's not an error, The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Enhanced Edition is now out for SteamOS/Linux and I am downloading it as I type this. This is truly a knock-out year for Linux gamers and it's only May!
Warning: Radeon graphics cards are not supported, Intel integrated graphics chipsets are also not supported. This commenter points out why. Interesting to see AMD fix their drivers so quickly, I hope more bigger games come out forcing all graphics vendors to improve.
One thing I mentioned before is the coming of "SteamOS" rather than Linux, it is becoming more frequent quickly and I am actually okay with that. Linux has been a scary word for developers for too long, but no more!
There have been hints at this happening for months and I am extremely pleased to see it turn out well for us.
Be warned it's a hefty 15.8GB download, so prepare for a wee bit of a wait. Grab a beer a relax while watching that download bar, or just play something else...
About
The player is Geralt of Rivia, a professional monster slayer, a witcher. Entangled in the political turmoil that engulfed Temeria, Geralt helped quell the rebellion of the Order of the Flaming Rose. Soon after, he saved King Foltest’s life when the monarch was attacked by a witcher-like assassin. He continues to protect the king, serving as his bodyguard as Foltest strives to bring peace to his kingdom. The Order’s last bastions have yielded to the royal army, yet one more task remains - the Baroness La Valette announced her secession from the realm, and her fortress must be taken. A month after the attempted assassination, Foltest’s armies stand at the gates of La Valette Castle, preparing for a final assault. Still at Foltest’s side, Geralt is among them, unable to begin his personal quest to discover the mysterious assassin’s origin and identity…
Thanks to the new, ultra-modern REDengine, The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings features both beautiful graphics and sophisticated in-game mechanics, drawing players into the most lively and believable world ever created in a video game.
Defining new standards for realistic, non-linear game narration, The Witcher 2 spins a mature, thought-provoking tale to produce one of the most complex and unique RPGs ever released on consoles. In addition to its epic story, the game features a complex combat system that uniquely combines dynamic action and tactical depth.
The great thing is that it's also 80% off to celebrate! Get it on Steam now, seriously go get it right now.
Check out the trailer if you haven't seen it before:
Direct Link
For those who own a boxed copy of it, with GOG.com supporting Linux this year I suggest you go here and reedem your backup copy on GOG. While you won't get a Linux copy yet I imagine in future you would.
You can also thank the developers directly on their official forums post on it.
UPDATE
It's no wonder people are experiencing poor performance issues, it looks like it uses a wrapper called "eON" from Virtual Programming who did the Mac port. This porting technology is new to Linux, so perfect performance isn't going to happen right away.
Personally I am displeased by this as the performance on the lowest setting for me isn't great and my rig is pretty damned powerful. I am actually glad I didn't pay full price as it's unplayable. I don't mean to be too harsh about it (I don't like to sugar coat things either), but when there's so many people claiming the same thing then something is up, but this "eON" tech is new to Linux, so there's always room for improvement.
If you scan around the files, you will note these:
eONprecompiledShaders32.dat
witcher2.vpfs
VPFS_registry.vpfsdb
Pretty obvious it uses their eON tech. It wouldn't be so bad if it didn't run so terribly, I've said before that I am glad our purchases count for Linux rather than Windows, but for newer games it just doesn't feel right somehow.
What do you think to this information?
UPDATE 2
A developer from the porting house who worked on this has done a few posts in the Steam forum topic on it. You can see one such post here, there's also a funny one here where the developer is sadly making rather uninformed statments:
jaycee1980Remember the binary Nvidia and AMD Catalyst drivers only tend to support newer hardware.
I wish developers would research a little more before saying such things, as it doesn't do their reputation any-good.
Both teams need to do some damage control I think and get down to fixing issues ASAP. Two things to check is if Vertical Sync and UberSamping are both off as both are known to cause problems, but sadly for me I still cannot play on the lowest possible settings.
Not the best of launches.
Quoting: AnonymousCan anyone play this on Arch Linux? Here I've got no keyboard input whatsoever, keys unbind just when I start the game. Please, tell me that it's not yet ANOTHER bad port...
Same problem for me on Kubuntu 14.04 x64/Nvidia. Tried also with XB360 Pad. No input. If I set keys manually, the game crashes. I had it installed since the "beta" was accidentially released on steam, maybe it works after re-download.. I'll try
Quoting: dudeopenSUSE(uptodate) running fine with KB!Quoting: AnonymousCan anyone play this on Arch Linux? Here I've got no keyboard input whatsoever, keys unbind just when I start the game. Please, tell me that it's not yet ANOTHER bad port...Same problem for me on Kubuntu 14.04 x64/Nvidia. Tried also with XB360 Pad. No input. If I set keys manually, the game crashes. I had it installed since the "beta" was accidentially released on steam, maybe it works after re-download.. I'll try
Is you Linux french? Mine is and it may be the source of the problem.
Quoting: GuestBought it, hopefully it will be more playable than the first one, and it will actually work on Arch Linux…Valve godness! Hail to the king Gabe! PC GLORIOUS MASTER RACE!
Amazed by the stupidy of Valve though, the game is not even shown on the page for Linux games on Steam. But we still have Super Meat Boy scrolling at the top, looks like it’s stuck there forever…
Quoting: AnonymousOK fixed it. Add LC_ALL=C %command% launch option in Steam and choose English as a language for the game, and you can change any option you want. Runs fine on Hi Spec graphical settings on i7 4770 and GTX 660.
Thank you! I always needed this command for unity-engine based games like Kerbal. But as far as I know, Witcher 2 has it's own engine. Maybe an OpenGL bug? Some deeper insight would be nice if anybody knows.
abelthorne May 22, 2014
Quoting: dudeThank you! I always needed this command for unity-engine based games like Kerbal. But as far as I know, Witcher 2 has it's own engine. Maybe an OpenGL bug? Some deeper insight would be nice if anybody knows.Might be related to the digits separators differences between countries. I.e. US/UK use the dot as a separator where other countries like France use the comma (which US/UK use as a list separator). It messes scripts and settings files.
This should be reported to the developers.
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